by Charles Todd
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I n the event, only Miss Fraser and Rutledge dined together that night. Robinson asked for a tray in his room, Mrs. Cummins got one out of habit, and Janet Ashton sent word that she didn't feel like eating at all.
The meal was well cooked. Miss Fraser said to Rutledge as she served their plates, “It's odd to know the house is full-and to have no one here.” But she seemed tired, as if she was glad she didn't have to make an effort at polite conversation. She had offered to lay a fire in the dining room and make it a proper meal, and he had refused to let her go to so much trouble.
“Do you do all the heavy work here?” Rutledge asked, carving the ham.
Elizabeth Fraser smiled. “Heavens, no! You've met Constable Ward, I think. His sister Shirley usually cooks and cleans for Mrs. Cummins. I'm merely filling in. Ward's daughter-in-law is expecting her first child this week and Shirley is staying with her until she delivers.” The smile deepened. “Harry Cummins suggested that Shirley bring her charge here while the men were searching for Josh. For safety. But Shirley told him roundly that any murderer who shows his face at Grey's Farm will regret the day he was born.”
“She sounds formidable!”
“And yet she's the kindest person!” She gestured towards the hot pad in the center of the table, and he set the platter of ham slices there. “Thank you, that's everything, I think.”
Hamish, a low murmur in the back of Rutledge's mind, was accusing him of letting down his guard. He tried to ignore the voice.
“Tell me about London,” she said as she drew up her chair across from him. “Is it more cheerful now? Are the shops carrying more goods? I've been away so long-” It was the first time she had indicated where she was from.
Rutledge told her what he could, trying to make the city seem better than it was, for her sake. The war was finished but the peace was gloomy, defeated and exhausted.
“I used to go to plays,” she said, “before the war. And to concerts. It was always so exciting, waiting for the moment when the music began or the curtain lifted. Jewels glittering, satins and silks and feathers catching the dim light with a flash here or a gleam there. The men so handsome in black. But the war changed all that. Everyone in uniform, colors more sober and suitable to the long lists of heavy casualties. Styles gone with the wind of change, and even the players and the musicians seemed daunted by it all. One of my favorite actors died early in the war, and a violinist from the symphony lost an arm and never played again. So sad.”
But there was more to the war than that, and she smiled, as if acknowledging his unspoken thought. “I know. But when change comes, you tend to feel the small sacrifices most, because they're more easily borne. The great sacrifices you try to shove out of your mind until there's a better time to grieve. As if there ever will be!”
“In the trenches, we wanted to believe that nothing had changed-that what we were fighting for was still there, just as we'd left it. But men would come back from leave and tell us the truth, and we'd try to absorb it without accepting it. I expect we didn't want to.”
As they finished their meal, she said, “Tell me honestly, if you will. Who do you think could have done this terrible thing? Will it turn out to be someone we know? Someone we've met on the street or dined with or spoken to on the church steps? I have thought about it, you see, and I don't know anyone who could have killed children -most particularly not those babies, who couldn't tell anyone what they'd witnessed! It's so senseless-so cruel.”
Rutledge wasn't ready to tell her about Janet Ashton's accusations against Paul Elcott. Instead he said, “I'm the stranger here, trying to find pieces of information to fit together, trying to look for evidence. You must tell me.”
She stared at him in surprise. “But you're a policeman-”
Rutledge smiled. “That doesn't make me omniscient. Still. We ought to begin by considering people closest to the family. Could Paul Elcott have shot his brother?”
Shocked, she exclaimed, “Of course he couldn't do such a thing! And in heaven's name, why would he even wish to? ”
He didn't answer that. “What about Robinson? He came home to find his wife and family gone, part of another man's life now.”
“Hardly a good reason to kill them!” she retorted in distress. “To win them back-that's understandable. From what Grace said, there was very little left of the marriage anyway. Otherwise she couldn't have fallen in love with Gerald.”
Which was, he thought, an innocent view of love and marriage. “How did they meet, Grace and Gerald?”
“He was convalescing in the village outside London where she was living. And he seemed to get on with the children long before he met her, making little things for them to play with. Invalids are encouraged to find ways of passing the time, and it helps, I expect, to keep one's hands busy.” She frowned, as if remembering her own recovery after her accident. “At any rate, as I heard the story, he was one of a group of soldiers sitting under the trees on the clinic's lawn, and he'd carved a lovely little boat to float in a pail of water, which Josh adored. Grace came to see if it was proper for Josh to accept such a gift, and soon found herself reading to the men every afternoon. I gather it wasn't a hasty, thoughtless courtship. They appeared to be so happy together, as if their feelings ran rather deep and would last…” She lifted her hand as if to make light of her words.
“Did she tell you she was happy?”
“Grace? It was something you read in her face, whenever Gerald stepped into the room. The way she turned to greet him-the smile she always had for him. I must say, I was more than a little envious.” She gave him a wry smile. “Every young girl dreams of that kind of love. Grace seemed to have found it.”
“All right then. Let's consider Janet Ashton. Was she happy with her sister's decision to remarry and move north?”
“Grace never discussed her sister with me, Inspector. And you must remember-when Miss Ashton came to visit she went directly to the farm and stayed there. We don't have dinner parties and afternoon fetes here in Urskdale. If she was in a shop with Grace, of course I'd make a point of speaking to both of them. But these were chance encounters, hardly an opportunity for anything more than idle conversation.”
“I understand Miss Ashton wasn't here for her sister's second marriage.”
She slid her serviette back into its ring. “It isn't pleasant, what you do, is it? Asking questions, prying into people's lives.”
“Better than letting a murderer go free.”
She looked at him. “I suppose that's true…”
But something in her face made him wonder if she believed it.
L ate in the night, Rutledge awoke with a headache, and reaching for his dressing gown, went to the kitchen for cold water to bathe his face.
Silent on stockinged feet, he moved along the passages wondering if his fellow guests were awake or had finally found sleep, however fitful. The house was quiet around him, and he felt at ease in the darkness.
“You canna' see through the doors,” Hamish reminded him. “Grief can make a long night!”
The front part of the house was drafty, cold air sweeping around his feet. Rutledge glanced at the front door as he passed, but it was firmly latched. As he stepped into the passage that led to the kitchen, the cold was like a sudden surge.
“'Ware!” Hamish warned.
The door into the kitchen was standing ajar, and Rutledge stopped, uncertain whether someone else was there. The room was dark, but the cold was more intense. Who had come in, without disturbing the household? A man making a report would have pounded on the door.
Behind him the short passage seemed alive with an electric tension. Was there a murderer even now making his way through the house, searching for a victim? Or had he come-and gone?
Rutledge moved forward quietly, until he could peer through the narrow crack. There was no light at all-the curtains pulled, the stove banked-and yet the chair backs were curved silhouettes.
He shift
ed his position, trying for a better view of the room.
He could just see the strip of harsh light where the door to the yard stood open to the night.
Nothing moved. There was no sound at all.
But as he watched, someone rose to fill the doorway, a slim figure standing straight, no more than a shimmering silhouette against the snow, breath like a wraith blowing into the room with the cold blast of air.
It was Miss Fraser, standing in the doorway, staring up at the fell that rose beyond the yard, a great white mass that had no beginning and no end from where Rutledge watched, the sky blotted out by its shape.
She took one step and then another, clutching at the door frame. And then after a long moment, she moved back, as if defeated, slowly subsiding into her chair again. With a last look into the snowy shadows of the fell, she wheeled herself back far enough to allow the door to be closed.
Rutledge heard the bolt slide home.
He didn't stay to be found there watching. Keeping close to the passage wall where he couldn't be seen if Miss Fraser turned, he reached the hall, and then without a sound was walking swiftly down the corridor to his room.
Hamish said, “She isna' as crippled as yon chair siggests.”
Rutledge answered slowly, “I don't know. Was it wishful thinking? Or the torment of wanting what isn't there…”
“Aye,” Hamish said, “It's no' much of a life for a lassie.”
B reakfast was nearly ready when Rutledge came down to the kitchen again. But it was Mrs. Cummins standing by the stove, busy with a pan of eggs. She looked up at her London guest.
“Good morning, Inspector! I'm afraid I've burned the toast-but only a little.”
The teakettle was whistling noisily, and he offered to pour hot water into the pot for her.
Relieved, she said, “Would you? I seem to be all thumbs-”
He made the tea, found butter in the pantry off the kitchen, brought in the cream, and was setting the table when Inspector Greeley arrived.
Surprised to see Mrs. Cummins, he said, “Good morning, Vera. Inspector.”
Rutledge said, “Any news?”
“Depends,” Greeley said, watching Mrs. Cummins. “The searchers have been to every farmhouse, combed the ruins they knew of, looked anywhere a child could hide. They're ready to admit defeat. Three days, and nothing.”
“What's your feeling about it?”
“The boy is dead, he has to be. Either frozen in the snow or tracked down by the killer. It was what we feared from the start… .”
Mrs. Cummins set the pan of eggs off the stove, humming a little to herself as if Greeley had been exchanging views on the weather.
“I hate to quit. I've never been one to quit,” he said, pulling out the chair. “That tea fit to drink?”
“Just steeped.” Rutledge poured him a cup. Greeley drank it thirstily.
“Come and talk to the men. See if you can give them new hope,” he said after a moment. “I've run out of words.”
“They know the land far better than I do. But I'll try.”
“Let's go, then. We'll take your motorcar. It's warming up, this morning, enough to melt the worst of the ice. We can make better time if you drive.”
T he two policemen found the roads either slushy enough to mire the tires or hard enough to make speed dicey. Greeley swore as they nearly got bogged down in the first drive they turned into. But they found a cluster of men in the yard behind the house, drinking mugs of tea and talking among themselves. The farmer, red-faced and weary, was gesturing towards the land that rose in the watery sun like a heavy blanket of snow and stone. The sky was a hazy blue.
The men turned at the sound of the motorcar, and came to greet Inspector Greeley, then to stare with curiosity at the stranger from London.
“Well, I've brought no news,” Greeley began, raising his voice so that all could hear him. “But Inspector Rutledge here is asking us for one more effort, another day at least, a searching of the mind as well as the terrain, trying to think where a lad like that could find shelter-a place he might have discovered on his own, a small space we as grown men might not think about, but a lad could crawl into-”
Hamish said, “He's making the speech for you!”
One of the searchers interrupted Greeley. “We've done that and more. It's not our failure, it's the fact that he's not there!” His eyes were hard, red-rimmed from lack of sleep and exposure to the cold wind. “There's stock to be seen to, and our own families. We're so tired we're at risk of not seeing the next crevice that will break a leg. We've done all we bloody can!”
“I know you of all people wouldn't give up, Tom Hester, if there was any chance at all! But I can't help but think the lad's out there and terrified, so terrified he won't come out and be found for fear what's hunting him is the killer. He'll stay in that hole like a wounded animal, and it's up to us to do the finding.”
Another searcher demanded, sourly, “Where's this hiding place, then?” He swept his arm across the landscape. “We've looked and looked, and there's nothing out there! The killer found him before we did, and it will be spring before the body comes to light! If it ever does.”
Rutledge, listening, could sense the feeling of frustration and the exhaustion that depressed these men, and he said, without raising his voice, “I believe you've done all you could. I disagree with Inspector Greeley. I think the time has come to call off the search.” Greeley turned in dismay.
The farmer, listening behind the men in his yard, spoke up. “How would you know? This isn't your country.”
“I've walked here in summer-” Rutledge began.
Greeley was staring, angry now, as if feeling betrayed.
The farmer grunted. “Summer, is it? That's as different from winter as the moon is from the sun!”
“I'm as aware of that as you are. But if you, the people who know this landscape, have run out of answers, then I must respect your decision-”
There was a furious denial that they had run out of anything. The first speaker, Tom Hester, said with some heat, “I tell you, we've looked -!”
Greeley answered, “So you have-”
The farmer said, “The weather's broken. The light is better. We'll give it one more day-”
There was agreement among those nearest the motorcar. In the end, they set their mugs on the steps of the farmhouse and began to move off again, shoulders bent and heads down, but willing after a fashion.
Greeley watched them go. “Damn it, Rutledge, for a time I thought you were stabbing me in the back.”
“They had to want to go,” Rutledge answered. “They couldn't be driven to go.”
It was the Cumberland and Westmorland temperament. Greeley had to acknowledge that.
They turned the motorcar in the muddy yard and went on to the next place where searchers had gathered, and the next. Only the last group refused to start again. As one man said, “You haven't been up there. Nothing could survive that storm, much less a lad Robinson's age. Not up there. And we've searched every house, every barn, every sheep pen, and every rock. I tell you, he's not there, nor never was, and I'm telling the truth as I see it!”
In the event, the man was wrong.
He had indeed searched-but he had reckoned without the canny knowledge of a woman who trusted no one and nothing but her own wits.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was late in the morning when the frightened child came bursting out of the room where he'd slept and into the kitchen where the fire was already warm enough to take away the night's chill.
A woman sat at the table, her face red from windburn, her eyes tired and sunk into their sockets.
Skidding to a halt, the child stared at her as though half expecting her to turn into an ogre before his eyes.
She stared back. The dog, wandering in to flop down by the stove, heaved a sigh as if duty done.
“Hungry, are you? There's porridge on the stove. I'm lame, you'll have to fetch it for yourself. And there's ewe's
milk in the pitcher. It's all I've got.”
The boy stood there, mute.
“My name's Maggie. It's what my father called me. I never liked it. What's your name?”
He shook his head.
Maggie shrugged. “As you like. But the food's there, if you're of a mind to eat.”
His eyes were darting around the room, still wide with fright as he backed towards the outer door.
“There's nobody else lives here, if that's what you're wondering. Unless you count seven sheep in the shed, yonder. I don't have much to say to them, nor they to me. Keeping them alive is all I owe them. My father is buried on the hill. It's what he wanted.”
She went on eating her porridge, not looking at him.
“The sheep in the shed got themselves hurt, one way and another. Silly buggers.”
The child seemed to be breathing more regularly, as if his heartbeat had settled down. But his face was still pale, and he was trembling.
“That's Sybil. The dog. She found you in the snow and took a liking to you. God knows why. You didn't look like much to me, when she dragged me up to the hill to where you were.”
He had reached the door and was fumbling for the latch.
“If you want to leave, that's your choice. But you'll eat first and put a coat on your back. I told you I was lame, and I'm damned if I'll drag your frozen carcass back a second time, just because Sybil here wants to keep you!”
Her gruffness seemed, oddly, to reassure him. After a long moment he sidled to the other side of the table, picked up a clean bowl, and then edged his way to the stove, to stand on tiptoe and dip hot porridge out of the steaming kettle.
The pitcher of milk was on the table, and he poured it without taking his eyes off the woman, as if expecting her to spring across the cloth to catch him.
She handed him a spoon without comment, and he backed across the room again to sit close to the dog before beginning to eat like a starving man.
“On the other hand, if you wanted to stay on a bit,” she said conversationally, “I've got nothing against it. But you'll not make work for me, you hear? And you'll do what I can't get about to do. It's only fair if I'm feeding you!”